To Return Is Far From Success
by ammcj062
Summary: AU, Nizam succeeds at changing the past. "When Dastan is a boy, he rescues his best friend from a beating. There is no King Sharaman at the marketplace, because there is no King Sharaman at all. He died a prince at the jaws of a lion."


When Dastan is a boy, he rescues his best friend from a beating. There is no King Sharaman at the marketplace, because there is no King Sharaman at all. He died a prince at the jaws of a lion, and the new King has better things to do that day than surround himself with common city-folk. Instead, there is a stranger shrouded in a dark cloak. He sees the boy's skill and sets a distraction – just enough of one for Dastan to squirm away with his hands attached and dive back into the streets. Then he ghosts the child until sundown, pounces upon him, and takes him away to the city no-one but themselves know about.

Dastan wakes up shivering, and the stranger watches at one of his snakes slithers up and down the boy's quivering body. "I am Zolm," he says. The boy shakes but meets Zolm's unnatural ice eyes with his own sky blue and replies, "Dastan," in as loud a voice he can manage without disturbing the snake twining around his torso. Zolm smiles at a memory, knowing he chose right, and has the boy keep the snake.

Brother-to-the-King Nizam had once sworn to keep Dastan on the streets. King Nizam keeps an eye out for high-flying acrobatic devil children when he must go out into the marketplace, but Dastan never appears this time. It's possible, Nizam thinks, that the boy has never been born. If a butterfly flaps its wings and creates a hurricane, can a king kills his brother and a nuisance along with him? He only sees Zolm's shadow once, a fleeting glimpse of an unnaturally small black cloak that quickly whips away as Nizam approaches. Zolm turns to greet Nizam with a strange smile that time – but then again, all of Zolms smiles are strange so the King thinks of it no more. Had Nizam had faster eyes, he would have seen the familiar flash of blue peeking out from the Hassansin cloak, glimpsed the adolescent face of a child he despises. But he's self-assured and arrogant and too slow. (He doesn't know he's not the only one that remembers the before that never happened.)

Dastan learns much in the years that Zolm keeps him captive, and even more in the years Zolm keeps him as an apprentice. The ways of the Hassasin come to him as naturally as breathing, and he quickly rises in the ranks. He is the best, loyal only to Zolm. He doesn't know of the two foster brothers he has that he's never met because they don't exist now, or the kind old man that had once saved him a hand and gave him a kingdom. He knows nothing of princedom and open warfare.

He does know, however, of an irrational hatred that seizes him when he sees the Persian King; feels the burst of pure malice that makes him stagger and thus allows the King one fleeting glimpse of his form as he darts away.

Nizam is now older than he ever was, and steps into the Hassansin stronghold with no little trepidation. With Zolm dead, he has no assurance that he will not be struck down as he walks these treacherous hallways. The Hassansin are a mystery with their barbaric ways and alien thoughts, and their motives are shrouded from the Persian King. Contrary to his fears, King Nizam is allowed through unmolested and his journey is much like the many other he's taken during his visits. There are still shrouded figures praticing their strange craft around every bend in the warren of hallways; still experiments bubbling and aromas of exotic plants boiling; still forges hammering out newer, better weapons. The only difference is the man that waits for him isn't old and bent but young and strong-shouldered, with eyes that aren't an unfocused ice blue but deeper in color, level and flat. (Nizam feels a shiver going down his spine, feels something that will be called déjà vu in the future.)

The new Hassansin leader pulls down his hood and watches the Persian King's face pale. "I am Dastan," he says, in the same mesmerizing hiss as his predecessor. A snake slithers out of his sleeve and down his robes.

Nizam quakes in terror.


End file.
